In its quest to reduce persistent skills gaps, Udacity has been designing condensed courses to get students up to speed on trendy topics to improve employment outcomes. The startup’s “Nanodegrees,” as they call them, span VR, robotics, deep learning and other key technical and non-technical skills. Today Udacity is announcing its latest addition to the lineup —… Read More

What it launched back in 2012, Toronto-based Top Hat (or “Top Hat Monocle,” as it was still known then) offered a phone-based classroom response system but little else in terms of content for teachers to use in their classes. In a way, though, that response system was Top Hat’s Trojan horse. It gave the company a foothold in the academic market and now that it has this… Read More

TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics will feature the industry’s best roboticists, technologists and investors. But what about the next generation? Everyone knows that there are not enough robotics engineers to go around, and the demand will only increase. We’ve enlisted the help of three amazing educators at the forefront of STEM and engineering education who will discuss their views on… Read More

Can A.I. help build better educational apps for kids? That’s a question Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the popular children’s TV program “Sesame Street” and others, aims to answer. The company has teamed up with IBM to create the first vocabulary learning app powered by IBM’s A.I., which adapts itself the child’s current reading level… Read More

The makers of Epic!, one of many apps jockeying to become a “Netflix for books,” have raised $8 million in a round led by Reach Capital, the education-specialized venture firm. Epic! at its core is an on-demand digital library that includes about 25,000 different books and videos appropriate for kids in elementary school, or between the ages of about five and twelve. Read More

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced it’s merging with another code club charity, Dublin-based CoderDojo. The aim is to advance shared goals around furthering the march of computing education for young people. Read More

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Last month, Apple announced its plans to offer an expanded set of educational sessions at its stores, which will now feature more in-depth training on how to use its devices and products, along with more community involvement ranging from having artists host talks on how they’re using Apple products to having customers venture outside for things like photo and sketch walks. This… Read More

Classroom collaboration software exists, but Epigrammar thinks its approach better tackles the issue of student grammar, test creation and comprehension. Teachers can help facilitate student conversations on an assigned text by uploading it to Epigrammar, then helping their students review and annotate the work, in real time. Read More

Microsoft never mentioned Chromebook by name, but it’s clear that Google’s browser-based hardware offering was at the front of everyone’s mind at today’s education event in New York City. The company has managed to control much of the market internally, but the Chromebook has swiftly eroded marketshare here in the States.
Microsoft’s solution is playing into… Read More

At an event today in New York, Microsoft unveiled its plan to recapture the classroom market share the company has steadily lost to Google’s Chromebook here in the States. Windows 10 S is a streamlined version of the software, designed to cut out some of the fat of the company’s popular ecosystem, in order to offer a more focused computing experience in the classroom.
The… Read More

Few saw the Chromebook coming. When it launched half a decade ago, the category was broadly maligned for its limited feature set, middling hardware specs and operation that required an always-on internet connection to work properly. But things change in five years. Read More

Ozobot, a golf ball-sized toy robot that helps kids learn to code, will be available in the form of Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man characters as of this summer. Evollve Inc., which makes the Ozobot, has previously offered character skins from Disney’s Marvel Avengers, including Iron Man and Captain America. Read More

Windows Central has gotten its hands on an internal document highlighting the hardware performance of Windows 10 Cloud, a rumored operating system spinoff expected to be unveiled at next month’s big education event in New York. Predictably, the slide puts the OS head to head with Google Chromebooks.
The category is a no-brainer for Microsoft as the company struggles to gain a foothold in… Read More

Earlier this week, the popular language learning service Duolingo quietly introduced paid monthly subscriptions in its Android apps.
Subscribers get two benefits: they won’t see ads in the app and they will be able to download lessons for offline use. In addition, there is also a feel-good aspect to this, as Duolingo highlights that subscribers to Duolingo Plus, as the subscription… Read More

Invites have just dropped for Microsoft’s latest press conference. Details are scant for the “Learn What’s Next” event happening May 2 in New York City, but between the title and the big #MicrosoftEDU hashtag that graces the crudely colored artwork, this looks to be focused on the company’s next big play at the education sector.
Back in January, the company… Read More

NASA has always embraced emerging technology for visualization, even if that tech was seemingly developed for frivolous entertainment. We recently covered its holographic Mars exhibit, and the many 3D resources that NASA makes available to developers and educators. Now, the US space agency has partnered with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to create a mixed reality International Space… Read More

There are roughly 58,000 homeless students on college campuses in the United States (according to the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth [NAEHCY] and Free Application for Federal Student Aid [FAFSA]).
That number could actually be much higher, given students’ reluctance to disclose any issues with their housing.
That same dynamic is also in play… Read More